Thanks, too, to MEP for his analysis and Doc's update. I started and ran a non-profit foundation for 10 years until I retired 16 months ago. It grew from one person to over 120 full time employees and $30M in annual revenue. By the time I retired we had about $2.5M in essentially fixed costs (administrative, financial, rent, insurance, communication, travel, etc.) That was a lot, but only about 7.5% of our annual revenue. For much smaller operations, the overhead is much larger with less economy of scale. What is very clear to me is that all of us benefit from the fact that Doc, Paul and Romo are charging us for only a little if any of the fixed cost portion of the Bottlehead business that the Tape Project represents. We are essentially paying for the marginal costs (it would be llike paying Microsoft for Office or Windows and only paying for the packaging and discs) and some depreciation for the equipment and some, but not all, of the labor costs. Since there is very little economy of scale (real time duplication with close QC monitoring), raw material that cannot be purchased in enough quantity for signficant volume discounts, high level customer service, etc. I think we have to bit the bullet on the price. Also, unlike other high end purchases (fancy cars, watches, designer clothes, private planes, etc.) this kind of pursuit of audio nirvana does not attract just the very wealthy who will often buy something just because it is exclusive with little consideration of price. So price is important, but quality of product is more important.
One piece of advice for Doc. Under promise and over deliver. For example, it probably would have diffused many of the concerns if you had signaled earlier about the price increase, even if it was only a guesstimate on the high side. Also, with a year plus production experience under your collective belts, it may be good to give overly long estimates of delivery times, to take into consideration potential shortages of raw materials (like the tape shortage), equipment breakdowns, problems with packaging materials, inefficiencies from having to fill partial orders, or late orders, etc. So when the price comes in at or lower than your signal and the product gets delivered earlier than promised, the customer is very happy. For example, it was a very good idea to change from dating the series' to numbering them.
We are very fortunate to be part of this wonderful project. Thank you Doc and Paul and Romo for the vision to put this together and the energy and spirit to keep it going.
Larry